Kangaroos aren't a viable food option

Nikki Sutterby is a co-ordinator for Australian Society for Kangaroos. She is writing in reply to this blog by John Kelly, executive officer of the Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia.

Kangaroos are the victims of the largest land-based wildlife slaughter in the world. Every year millions of kangaroos and their joeys are killed in the wild for their meat and skins by the kangaroo industry. Contrary to popular belief this large-scale “cull” of our national icon is not about crop protection, damage mitigation or population control. It's about profit for an industry that supplies meat to pet food companies and meat processors, and skins to sports shoe companies.

Despite claims that kangaroos need to be "controlled", are overpopulated, and wreaking havoc on our agriculture, government data shows kangaroos have declined by 55 per cent since 2001, and are at critical densities of less than five per square kilometre across most of Australia. Research by the University of New South Wales and the CSIRO also shows kangaroos rarely compete with sheep and cattle for pasture, or damage crops. In fact there are five times as many sheep and cattle in Australia compared to kangaroos, and according to the Australian State of the Environment Report 2006, kangaroos exert a grazing pressure of just 5 per cent on low intensity grazing land (60 per cent of Australia) compared to sheep and cattle, at 95 per cent.

The massive push by the kangaroo industry to eat kangaroo is also misleading, claiming that eating kangaroo will save the planet and reduce greenhouse emissions. According to scientists at the THINKK tank at the University of Technology, Sydney, if everyone in Australian ate just one small portion of kangaroo meat per week, the entire kangaroo population would be wiped out within a year. This point exposes the fact that there just isn't enough meat on kangaroos, or enough kangaroos for that matter, to support our requirements.

Claims by the kangaroo industry that slaughter practices are humane are also misleading. The RSCPA in its 2002 report clearly states that the way in which kangaroo joeys are killed by the industry is inhumane. When a mother kangaroo is shot, the industry will decapitate or bludgeon to death the pouch joey. The report also found that a proportion of at-foot joeys, orphaned when the mother is shot, will die a horrible death from starvation, predation and exposure. What should also be considered is that kangaroos have complex social structures and close family bonds, and are known to suffer significant stress and grief when one of their mob dies.

Australians have never been asked whether they approve of their national emblem being killed on a massive scale for pet food and sports shoes, but they at least deserve to know all the facts about the kangaroo industry, so they can make conscious choices at the checkout.